Problem with going direct to PA

Sidivan

Fractal Fanatic
I've been incredibly impressed with the Axe FX's performance thus far through our PA setup, but last week the owner of the PA (our drummer) brought an experienced sound guy in to help "setup the rest of the rack effects". I was not present during this ordeal, but they moved a bunch of power amps around in racks, hooked up all the rack effects (compressors and such), etc... I don't know exactly what they did because I can't get the time, or the knowledge for that matter, to start digging into the routing, but this has effected our sound tremendously. The drums sound fantastic as do vocals, but my axe now sounds neutered.

I'm no longer getting the response from the PA sound that I normally get. The cleans sound good, but my distortion tones sound squashed and over-compressed. When I hit a distorted note, for a split second I hear the attack and then it's like a limiter or compressor kicks in and clamps the sound down. I have virtually no control over the dynamics because it doesn't matter if I slam the strings or barely tap them now. I've been throwing a fit about compression, figuring they routed everybody to an outboard compressor instead of just the drums and/or vocals, but the drummer swears there's no compressor on my chain. I then thought phasing was an issue because initially he said the PA was in stereo... later he admitted it was mono. I changed the output settings on the axe from Stereo to Copy L->R and there is no difference in the sound. I did notice a slight bit of the "imaginary compression" come off when I reduced the output signal, but it still didn't sound open like it did 2 weeks ago.

I'm at wit's end here trying to figure this out. I think it MUST be a compressor or limiter that's cutting the chutzpa off my signal. Any ideas?
 
They must've routed you through a compressor somewhere. You gotta dig in and find it.
 
Had the same issue with a frequented venue. The sound guy would not take me out of the comp/limiter chain.
I hated my FOH sound.....However ( i punished him with my stage monitors) I like the sound guy I work with now. He understands me! ;)
 
Figure out which channel they have you plugged into. Look at the insert for that channel and unplug the insert cable if there is one. But don't tell them you did it. :)

- John
 
i bet you it is indeed a compressor.

my axe sounds great usually, but i plugged into the PA system at my store one day and nothing was sounding good, almost exactly like you described. i finally found out there was a compressor after the mixer, and it was set very high. it was squashing all the dynamics and basically acting as a limiter.

i turned it off and BAM there was my tone.

so sometimes we can't do anything about it. best thing to do is make sure you are gain staged as best as possible to the main mixer, not too soft, not too loud. if they run the compressor after the main outs, there is nothing can do.

if you can ask them to lighten up on the compression a bit, it may help, but if they are going for that "no way in hell you are blowing up my speakers" setting, then the guitar and the entire band's sound will suffer.
 
After a good long, "There has to be a compressor on this" "Dude, I swear to you there is absolutely no compression" conversation I just dug into the routing and lo and behold there is a DBX compressor/limiter in my chain with the compressor set to a low threshold and the ratio at 6:1. Turn that down to 1:1 and we're off to tone nirvana once again. I left the limiter on, but struck a nice balance between my Axe's output and the threshold.

4 songs into practice the singer says, "Wow, that guitar sounds a lot more crisp tonight." :roll:

Thanks for your help!
 
we run Avioms out of a digital mixer. My sound guys swears that the Avioms are completely unprocessed signals (ie. no compressor) and, further, that there is no provision in the mixer to do otherwise.... but it sounds pretty bad to me. I wonder if he's wrong and I'm getting compressed as well. I haven't tried the AxeFx through it yet (comes in tomorrow!). This is my amp/cab mic'ed.
 
banjoze said:
we run Avioms out of a digital mixer. My sound guys swears that the Avioms are completely unprocessed signals (ie. no compressor) and, further, that there is no provision in the mixer to do otherwise.... but it sounds pretty bad to me. I wonder if he's wrong and I'm getting compressed as well. I haven't tried the AxeFx through it yet (comes in tomorrow!). This is my amp/cab mic'ed.


They may have the signal too hot and it is clipping thing going back to you. Easy to check. See if the distribution unit has red lights lighting up when everyone is playing.
 
Java: will check into the clipping next time I play. I've wondered the same thing. I kinda doubt it as the sound guy is pretty knowledgeable.

I ran my Axe into the PA yesterday. Same crappy sound for it as well. Sounds find in the house, but the earphones / head phones don't sound good at all. Interestingly I have a similar issue at home with my Axe. It sounds nice in my studio monitors, but is pretty fizzy in my headphones. I wonder if the so-called "fizz" sounds are always there, but don't translate in our hearing when coming thru speakers and pushing air between the speakers and ears?

Has anyone else had to deal with this sounds good everywhere except headphones issue? Solutions?

Thanks,
-Gerald
 
I've found that patches eq'd to sound good at gig volume through FOH don't seem to translate well into headphones (Sony MDR7506) without additional eq to lower upper mids and highs, and add some low mid/low oomph. I have no experience with in ear monitors.
 
IME the MDR7506 has a scooped sound with a harsh and hyped high end (I can't stand to listen to them for longer than a few minutes because of the harsh highs) so I think you're just compensating for the headphones deficiencies. Try some other headphones.

S.R.
 
yek said:
How are the headphones connected?

Assuming this question was for me, the headphones I'm using live are connected directly to an Aviom system with a stereo jack. The Aviom is connected to the PA. At home I have an audio interface connected to my PC via USB. My studio monitors (ART) are driven from the output of the audio interface and the headphones plug into it as well. The audio interface is currently a Line6 Toneport UX2, but previously it was a MAudio Firewire 410. I get similar results with both.
 
Seems like there's nothing wrong with your setup.
Thought you might have connected them directly, thats why.
I'm using a little mixer or a headphones amplifier with the same Sony as mentioned above.
I'm not happy with the result either. Although a lot seems to depend on setting levels correctly.
 
GuitarDojo said:
Had the same issue with a frequented venue. The sound guy would not take me out of the comp/limiter chain.
I hated my FOH sound.....However ( i punished him with my stage monitors) I like the sound guy I work with now. He understands me! ;)

+1 on the compressor thing.
The only thing the FOH compressor should be in the signal chain of are the vocals.
Otherwise it kills the dynamics of the total sound...you play a soft sweet passage and it comes out at the same volume your power chords do.
 
grumpops said:
GuitarDojo said:
Had the same issue with a frequented venue. The sound guy would not take me out of the comp/limiter chain.
I hated my FOH sound.....However ( i punished him with my stage monitors) I like the sound guy I work with now. He understands me! ;)

+1 on the compressor thing.
The only thing the FOH compressor should be in the signal chain of are the vocals.
Otherwise it kills the dynamics of the total sound...you play a soft sweet passage and it comes out at the same volume your power chords do.

Hmm, don't agree. Compressors can be valuable for everything, esepcially drums, if used with moderation of course.
 
Funny story: Several years ago a friend of mine was checking out a new studio in town. They had a lot of nice gear and were cutting a vocal track while he was there. They had a Manley tube compressor on the track. My friend noticed that they had the Manley set on the 20:1 limiter setting! The engineer asks my friend (also an engineer) "what do you think of the vocal sound". My friend says "it sounds a little squashed" to which the engineer says "Well, I don't know why???...I'm limiting!"

That studio = no longer in business
 
I find that local soundmen where I live simply don't "get" the AXE FX. It never fails that these guys either use the compressor on me or EQ the hell out if it as if I've got a traditional amp with an SM-57 in front of it. They have this "set it and forget it" mentality and incorrectly think that (regardless of the fact that every guitarist in every band has a different amp / rig) they can just leave the eq knobs for the mixer channels for the guitars set the same way for each show and it will always "sound good".

The fact is that the AXE FX (run direct with cab and mic sims turned on) mimics the end signal from a perfectly mic'ed up traditional guitar amp or rig. All of our patches are usually EQ'ed internally to sound good as an end result. Throwing compression or EQ on them after the fact completely alters your tone. Not only THAT, but also your patch volume levels when switching back and forth. You can spend forever getting your volume levels all perfect for all of your patches (in relation to each other) and then one of these nitwits either compresses or EQ's your signal and all hell breaks loose. You can explain this to some of these guys a millions ways a million times. But, they either think that you don't know what you're talking about or they just ignore you and proceed to butcher the entire sound of your band. This is one of the many reasons why I end up bringing my own PA and running sound from the stage myself while we're performing. It's very frustrating.
 
The problem of bad sound men is generally a mixture of a lack of real experience and knowledge and arrogance about the wealth of experience they think they have because they've been running sound for *insert number of years here*. Of course a lot of them are deaf too...that doesn't help. I've worked with high-end companies such as Claire Brothers all the way down to the local club guy and the only time there is ever a problem is with local and/or club sound guys (no offense). National dates have national caliber sound men for the most part and there are never any problems. Even venues with a rotating staff (like Disney) have a head tech who knows what is going on. I've had club sound techs not know how to run a compressor (more common than is even believable), not have any idea what gain-staging is or how to accomplish it, mic a snare drum from 4ft. away (not kidding!), and not know what a direct box is (also not kidding)! I had a sound guy in Buffalo once on a fairly high-end corporate gig tell me his high-mid center frequency on his parametric was 30K! I said "hmmm, that's a little high!"

This is exactly why I don't do local shows very often...unless I'm hiring the soundtech! :lol:
 
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